Month: July 2010

Mulligan stew goes by many names: irish stew, hotch-potch, hot pot, burgoo. This recipe is believed to have first originated in the early 20th century in hobo camps. The beauty of this recipe is that its not so much a recipe as it is a guideline. If you’ve ever heard the story of stone soup, mulligan stew is the epitome of this idea. The idea was that a bunch of hobos would get together and add whatever they could scrounge or scavenge together in a pot and cook it.

Mulligan stew is essentially the combination of chunks of meat and chunks of vegetables. It doesn’t matter what kind of meat or what kind of vegetables because it will all come together just fine in the end. To make the stew, you need a pot and a fire. Cut whatever meat and vegetables you have into bite-sized pieces and put in the pot. Fill the pot up with water just enough to cover the contents. Place the pot on the fire, covered, for at least 2 hours.

If you’ve read any of my previous articles, you will have noticed that they are all focused around surviving in the wilderness. There are plenty of websites that you can read with this type of article. How to survive in the woods, how to live without the use of modern society, and other general survivalist topics. That isn’t what I’m focusing on here. I think this information is vital, but what I’m trying to provide is information on how to survive in a doomsday scenario.

In most doomsday scenarios, the infrastructure of the world is still intact, the people are just gone (plague, external invasion, etc). Most every city and town in the U.S. has a grocery store, a hardware store, and a majority even have a hospital. These facts put together means that you can go to nearly any city and scavenge any equipment or materials you may need. Something that every single city, town, or village anywhere in the world has that can be useful: empty buildings. You can use a settlement to provide shelter, either temporary or permanent.

Put this information together with the basic survivalist knowledge and you get a full spectrum guide to survival. The key is to be resourceful and use your environment. If the manual says “use a stick” and you happen to be near a town, go to the hardware store, get some PVC or lead pipe or something like that instead of scrounging for hours for a proper stick. Like the Boy Scouts say, “Be Prepared.”

In an end of the world/limited supplies situation, it can be a benefit to know how to make a torch. A torch may be used as a long-lasting light source or a small heat source. In an environment without electricity, a torch is an easy way to light an area.

Makeshift Torch

In a survival situation, you may need to improvise a torch for one reason or another. In this case you need to use your environment to make a torch. There are three basic components to a makeshift torch: the handle, the wick, and the fuel. The handle is the part you hold on to and attach the rest of the torch to. It is commonly a 3-4 foot long stick that is about 2-3 inches thick, but it can be any material you can find that won’t melt or fall apart. The wick is the part of the torch that you light on fire. This can be anything from dry grass to leaves to twigs: as long as its flammable it will work. In fact, the more flammable the better because that means it will be easier to light. The fuel is what is doing the “heavy lifting”, so to speak, of the torch fire. You can use animal fat, wax, tree sap, or (should you be desperate enough) chapstick.

You need to coat the wick completely in the fuel, make sure that everything is covered. Wrap the wick and fuel around the top of the handle and tie it with something: a strip of cloth, flaky bark, vines, roots, string, wire, etc. Once you light this, it should last for a fair amount of time, but this depends on how much fuel you put into it. It should be noted at this time that these torches are not very stable and it is possible that it could begin to fall apart and you may even burn yourself, so be careful!

Birch Bark Torch

There is an even simpler way to construct a torch, though it won’t last nearly as long. This is a birch bark torch. To make one of these, you need to pull a sheet of bark off of a tree with papery bark like the birch tree. Your sheet should be about 2-3 feet long. Wrap it at an angle to form a cone. Make sure it is wrapped tightly, but not so tightly that it isn’t hollow in the center. Tie it in several places down the length with string, wire, vines, etc. This type of torch will only last a little while, but its a great way to get light quickly.

Permanent Torch

If you need a more permanent torch, you need to use more permanent components. For the handle, use something like PVC pipe or a metal post. The best solution for wick and fuel is string and lamp oil. You can make an oil reservoir using an old soup can and an old tuna can. Punch a hole in the bottom of the tuna can and feed a string (or actual candle wick) through it, then fill the soup can with lamp oil. Turn the tuna can upside down and place on top of the soup can. Duct tape the two can together and attach your reservoir to the top of your handle. This torch can still be leaky, especially if it isn’t held upright, but it offers a more permanent, reusable solution.

Of course, the best solution is to just scavenge a tiki torch from the Walmart near you. While chintzy, the $5 tiki torches in the Outdoor department at a Walmart or similar store are better built than most things you can put together “in the wild”.